Moderation: Wolfgang Gerhartz
Have you ever held Runge's book The Formative Drive of Materials in your hands? You will be impressed by the images, some of which even make you think of them as depictions of nature. But in essence they are nothing more than the product of a chemical reaction in which different solutions were dripped onto blotting paper. Runge had thus developed a precursor to chromatography . But in this context he was also interested in the question of whether there was not a force of nature behind these images, analogous to the life force (vis vitalis). In the lecture it will be possible to enjoy some images from the original edition in Rostock, but also to learn about Runge's life, his important discoveries (caffeine, quinine, aniline, carbolic acid, pyrrole) and to hear passages from his "Household Letters".
Moderation: Hans-Uwe von Grabowski
In the lectures on organic chemistry, first and second order nucleophilic substitution reactions are discussed. If second order substitution takes place at a carbon atom that is a stereogenic center, the configuration is reversed, which is often described as the flipping of an umbrella. This phenomenon has entered the literature as the Walden reversal because it was first described by the scholar Paul Walden. His main field of work was physical chemistry, however, and he is sometimes even celebrated as the father of ionic liquids. But the name Walden can also be found in the history of chemistry , although he concealed his origins from a Latvian peasant family and presented himself as a Baltic German. In addition to an appreciation of his achievements in chemistry and a critical examination of his historical contributions, the biography of this chemist is presented, who experienced Tsarist Russia, briefly independent Latvia, Germany under the Weimar Republic and National Socialism, and finally the Federal Republic of Germany.
Moderation: Uwe von Grabowski
The lecture will pay particular attention to the life and work of the lesser-known chemist Meyer. The focus of the presentation will be on the individual stages on Meyer's path to the discovery of periodicity. His drafts of (partly unpublished) classification systems from the years 1864, 1868 and 1869 to 1872 will be discussed.
This page has been machine translated. If you have any feedback or comments please feel free to contact us. 
last modified: 10.07.2024 18:59 H from N/A
